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Speaking of pointless graphics arms races

December 17th, 2007 (Visited 2400 times) Tags:

First, look at the beast that is the new 3-way SLI video card.

Then consider what it gets you (reg required):

Two key FPS titles failed to make waves in their opening month of sales in the US. Research firm NPD Group said that EA and Crytek’s critically lauded FPS Crysis sold just 86,633 units last month, following its release on November 13… A Metacritic average review score of 91 wasn’t enough… A PC with a dual core processor, 2GB of RAM and a mid-level DX10 card runs the game at around 30 framers per second average at midrange resolution… Midway and Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament 3 for PC fared even worse, selling just 33,995…

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13 Responses to “Speaking of pointless graphics arms races”

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Morgan Ramsay said on December 17th, 2007 at 1:41 pm:
Forgetting even the monitor or the rest of the computer, that’s $1,500 in graphics cards alone.
If that price doesn’t make you blink, the good news is that early benchmarks show 3-Way SLI delivering amazing 3D performance, at least for the most part.
Hooray for amazing 3D performance…
Matt Fisher said on December 17th, 2007 at 2:08 pm:
While I greatly prefer the controls of an FPS on a PC, they’ve priced themselves out of the market for me. If they’d support keyboard+mouse on a console, I wouldn’t blink twice, and PC gaming in general would be dead to me except a few specific applications.
Why don’t the console manufacturers just give us keyboard + mouse support? (I was under the impression they specifically decided to disable it, or the peripheral manufacturers would have given us them already. You can find them, I think, but they’re not authorized.) I mean, there are two bloody USB ports right on the front of my 360. Heck, I’d settle for just a mouse. Pop a $5 USB mouse in the C&C4 or Halo Wars box and I buy them.
Take note, MS. For the cost of a $5 mouse, that $3000 I’ll be spending on a new PC next year would be going right into more games and peripherals from you instead of a new high-powered rig from Dell.
Tarek said on December 17th, 2007 at 2:20 pm:
I’d be a lot more interested in the Hybrid Crossfire mentioned by AMD. Sure, it means replacing the motherboard, but the MB is going to be cheaper than buying three(!) video cards to slot into the computer.
And it strikes me as being a wonderful engineering solution; finally, the onboard video chips won’t be a complete waste of money for a gaming rig.
csven said on December 17th, 2007 at 3:12 pm:
Happened to read about the 3-way yesterday and there was a line in that (different) piece about how gamers could now see the visuals the developers intended.
Something wrong with that picture (pun intended).
Amanda Cosmos said on December 17th, 2007 at 3:17 pm:
Only the cutting edge can enjoy 3,000 barrels in real time!
TickledBlue said on December 17th, 2007 at 4:57 pm:
I can’t confirm this but doesn’t Epic Games make more money from licensing its engine to developers? I also heard something about Crytek also wanting to license the Crysis engine (can anyone confirm this?). If this is the case then it makes sense for the games to push the technological envelope to make it more attractive as an engine for future development. Mind you the trouble Epic has been having with Silicon Knights (or should that be the other way around) probably hurts this aspect of their business more than poor UT3 sales.
There will always be a segment of the market that is driven by graphics, each generation of console seems to feel the next step is bigger and better graphics (thank you Nintendo for bucking that trend and showing how user experience is so much more important) and graphics engines that service this market always need to stay ahead of that curve. Its a case of supplying to a demand… I’m hoping that the groundswell of emaphisis on gameplay and indy titles coming more and more into the mainstream eye will make that demand a less ravenous beast in the future.
Tess said on December 17th, 2007 at 5:41 pm:
First off, Amanda, that would be the funniest dang thing I’d heard in the last 24 hours, had I not been watching one of Eddie Izzard’s shows on cable last night.
John Carmack said a few years ago that he felt that the 3D graphics engine was approaching “done,” and that soon, we could stop worrying about all that crap, and get on with making good games. I think “Portal” is pretty much the poster child for that sentiment. GPU-melting engines were never necessary for great gameplay, but we’re really at a point where you can create extremely modern-looking games on slightly dated engines — and you get greater stability and a wider hardware install base, in the deal.
I’ve always put my foot down and refused to buy games my current hardware wouldn’t support. When I was a younger lass, this meant passing on the entire Wing Commander series. I was a poor college student, and I sure as heck couldn’t afford a snazzier machine. If Origin wanted me to buy their games, they would have to damn well make a game I could run.
(This is not to say I’ve never upgraded a machine, when I found myself neck-deep in a game, and wanted a better experience out of it. But, that’s different. I would’ve never cared enough to do that upgrade, had the game not run on my machine in the first place.)
Steven "PlayNoEvil" Davis said on December 17th, 2007 at 6:36 pm:
The big change is that most of us keep our PCs for 3-5 years now. It used to be you’d really want and need to switch out your PC every 18 months to 2 years. Games just gave you an excuse to do something you were going to do a couple of months sooner. Now, the difference can be years… and I’m in no hurry to upgrade anymore.
Wolfe said on December 18th, 2007 at 3:54 am:
This rhymes in a funny way with: http://www.curse.com/articles/details/4417/
Who really is the driver behind hardware sales again?
robusticus said on December 18th, 2007 at 7:58 am:
Looks like the message there is you will sell just under 5 times more on the XBox 360.
RIP, Intel. It was a good run.
moo said on December 19th, 2007 at 10:19 am:
Consoles are the way to go now, because it costs too much and is too much hassle to upgrade a PC every year or two. My PC is now 3 years old and I haven’t seen anything yet that would give me the slightest urge to upgrade it. If it comes out on the Xbox360, the Wii or the PS2 then I can play it. Otherwise it will pass me by…
Kerri Knight said on December 19th, 2007 at 10:32 am:
There was once a time when I was a fairly serious hardware enthusiast. I still custom build machines and may spend a few days with debates raging in my head about which specific pieces and parts to get. I focus mostly on eliminating bottlenecks, dual channel memory, RAID, and all that jazz. Every upgrade cycle I’ve gone through in the last 8 years has seen a more and more dated GPU at the time of purchase.
I get the feeling the ‘massively graphical first person shooter’ (MGFPS) projects like these are almost more of a ‘proof of concept’ followed through to a released product. But then, just like catering to ‘hardcore’ by playstyle gamers, you’re aiming at 5% of the total market. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think everyone should be aiming for the biggest chunk. I’ve had enough of 95% of the offerings (in whatever medium/product/service business) designed for 37% of the population because that’s the biggest demographic (yes, those numbers are made up, only for effect).
So, I’m torn….I don’t care, but more power to them.
Just don’t expect me to buy the cards until they’re under ~$200-250
Kim said on December 29th, 2007 at 10:59 pm:
I agree those numbers are pretty sad. I do think that there’s something to the earlier comment about both companies licensing engine tech. That lets (makes?) them aim further out on the ‘performance vs installed base’ trade off.
Also, CoD4 topped NPD’s PC numbers this month, so there may be some depression they are seeing from simply getting beaten by a competing title, period.

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